“Hey, Do You Come with the Car?”

The domestic auto-show season opens this week in Los Angeles, with subsequent stops in Detroit, Chicago, D.C., and New York, among other major cities. These vehicular extravaganzas will draw literally tens of millions of car aficionados into musty, crowded convention centers during the next few months. If you personally attended one of these spectacles in the 1970s or 80s, you may share in one of our most indelible childhood memories: watching a beautiful woman in a slinky dress pose on the hood of a baroque automobile with a live cougar. This kind of demeaning sexualized pageantry was standard industry fare in our louche, Malaise Era youth. Not so anymore.

These days, instead of procuring these “Booth Babes” from the local Playboy club, most automakers hire mixed-gender teams of professional product specialists, who travel our nation’s car-show circuit greeting visitors, answering questions, and delivering detailed vehicle information. These representatives are much like a car dealership’s sales staff, in that they receive officially sanctioned training about a brand’s various product offerings. However, unlike your typical car salesman, the specialists wear handsome and coordinated outfits. And they’re not mendacious scoundrels, hell-bent on robbing you. “We have people who’ve been with us for 10 years,” Andrea Santilli, the auto-show coordinator for Audi, explained to us, “and they’re really loyal to the brand, and know the products extremely well.”

Helping coordinators like Santilli to cast the men and women to fill these roles are people like Marci Rice. Marci is a vice president at Gail & Rice, an 80-year-old, Detroit-area event-services firm with an exhaustive automotive client list, and an even larger database of potential professionals. “Each manufacturer has different needs or goals,” Marci told us, outlining the relative importance of attributes such as educational background, technological skills, or fluency in German or American Sign Language.

Appearance, however, remains key, with all potential candidates having to submit a headshot and come in for an audition and a video interview, which can then be screened for potential clients. “You try to fit the type of people you’re looking for to the demographics of the buyers for each car company,” Marci told us. “For Kia or one of the younger companies,” she said, “you may want younger, hipper, more fun and funky-type people. Whereas with a high-end luxury brand, you might want someone more mature, that looks like they might actually purchase that car.”

Why all the attention to detail? Easy: these specialists are on the front lines in the battle for sales. “Sixty percent of people who attend an auto show are in the market to purchase or lease a vehicle that year,” Marci claimed. “And 40 percent of those people are actually impacted by their visit. So the people you have staffing these booths have the opportunity to either confirm or sway a decision.” A vapid blonde chained to a carnivorous feline and a rote script will have little effect on today’s savvy, selective, Web-educated consumer. “They come prepared,” Marci said. “So our specialists have to be trained.”

Still, the stereotypical Booth Babe isn’t a total relic. Some Italian supercar-makers still feature them. And many automotive brands employ a special category of representatives called hostesses during the press days preceding big shows, to help make their vehicles more . . . photogenic to journalists. When we asked Audi’s Santilli how she chooses these women, she laughed. “I usually enlist some of the guys in the office to help me. They enjoy that job.”

In our quest to find out more about the secret life of an auto-show product specialist, we gave a call to Tracie Juncaj. Tracie is about to start her 18th auto-show season. After stints with Honda, Chevy, and Subaru—and a job working rally races as a Pirelli girl—she’s currently a product specialist for Cadillac. Tracie was kind enough to answer a few of our invasive questions. Highlights from our conversation below:

Brett Berk: Obviously the world of product specialists has changed quite a bit since you’ve joined the profession. What are the biggest changes?

Tracie Juncaj: Back then, 18 years ago, you would wear beautiful outfits. You’d be there to be pretty, and helpful, and polite—talk about the car through the script that they gave you, memorize it verbatim, and know the trim levels. Now, you need to be much more knowledgeable on the product and know how the mechanics of the vehicle actually work—the suspension, the engine, how we’re different from the competition—because now you have a very educated buyer.
What’s the worst thing about being a spokesperson?

Being on the stand talking about a vehicle and having some guy yelling out, “Hey, do you come with the car?” That was common, maybe 10 or more years ago. That was standard. You just had to smile—I mean, what can you say? “Oh, you’re original? You’re so funny.” You just handle it gracefully and politely, and just bite your tongue.
What’s the funniest thing that’s happened to you as a spokesperson?

My first year, I had two cars on turntables, next to each other. And I opened the door as I was speaking about one vehicle, and the other car came swinging around and they crashed into each other. It’s lovely when you have an audience in front of you watching this all go down. I thought, “I’m so fired.” But the agency was great. They were like, “This is what insurance is for.”

Also, I met my husband working the auto shows. I was at Honda at the time and he was with Isuzu. We met in Atlanta, though we’re both from Michigan. Every now and again, we’d have a show together somewhere around the country. He was my big crush, but it took four or five years until we started dating.